In A Short History of the Blockade, award-winning writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories, storytelling aesthetics, and practices to explore the generative nature of Indigenous blockades through our relative, the beaver—or in Nishnaabemowin, Amik. Moving through genres, shifting through time, amikwag stories become a lens for the life-giving possibilities of dams and the world-building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance as both a negation and an affirmation. Widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation, Simpson’s work breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song, bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. A Short History of the Blockade reveals how the practice of telling stories is also a culture of listening, “a thinking through together,” and ultimately, like the dam or the blockade, an affirmation of life.

A popular approach to the subject, not an academic book. Tomson Highway is not an academic. He is an artist who uses artistic language.Readers are not obliged to read the whole volume. Each page is like an entry in an encyclopedia. All one has to do is leaf through the table of contents, choose an entry, and ignore all the rest or, rather, save it for another more propitious time.Each book description is a snapshot. Not only should the reader's curiosity be piqued to the point where he or she will want to buy the book seen in that snapshot, he will want to read more books written by the same author.Think of this book as "Tomson's Books," which would be this fascinating collection of writings by Native writers wherein this ridiculous Cree man from northern Manitoba chats warmly about and then, similar to Gilmour's Albums, the popular radio show that ran from 1957 to 1997 on CBC Radio hosted by the amiable Clyde Gilmour.